On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 20:09 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote: > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > > Christofer C. Bell wrote: > > > >>On 1/19/06, Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> > >> > >> > >>>BTW, desiring to control the behavior of others is generally > >>>considered a personality disorder. > >> > >> > >>BTW, that's exactly what commerical EULAs do, also. So commerical > >>software distributors are all rife with personality disorders, as > >>well? > >> > > > > After reading a few EULAs, do you any droughts about them having > > "personality disorders"? > > Some of them seem to, I agree. But not all EULAs are bad. > Take, for example, GPL. Do you think it is a bad EULA? --- for the EU, it's a pretty good deal - in fact, I think that's why most of us are here. Not being a programmer, I stay out of the fray and pretty much figure that right or wrong, every programmer has the right to determine, what/where/when/how they practice their craft and who gets to see/use/inspect their craft. This discussion has ranged to widely to ever get some type of agreement amongst the people who have sounded off and to some extent, there is a lot of agreement. >From my perspective, I see companies selling the same software over and over again and the price doesn't come down...in fact, the pricing seems to rise and fall based upon popularity and market share and the companies that have success in the market place tend to use the profits for other software development. It seems absurd that the going price of a Word Processor program should be $204.95 http://www.pcconnection.com/ProductDetail?Sku=455499 - this isn't meant to pick on Microsoft but rather to make a point. Microsoft is but one of the offenders. The fact is that this is a really mature product and the opportunity of the GPL/BSD/FLOSS software is that this technology can be had for no cost or little cost and not subject to corporate whim, diminished access to your data, documents stored in formats that are proprietary and undocumented. There is the ability for someone to resurrect a project by taking the source code and fixing/extending/redirecting it instead of the black hole that some software falls into when a company is acquired or folds. Then of course, there is the issue of many software programs that extort money by requiring purchased upgrades because they fixed the bugs that users complained about but only in the new version. I don't wish to denigrate the value of software programmers and wish them all their due - or as Joanne puts it...lunch. It's simply the excesses of many have made the Open Source offerings far more attractive. Craig
